Ashes of Raging Water Read online

  I glowered at the technological eye mounted atop the largest monitor. I couldn’t reprimand her for performing her programmed functions, but warmth still pricked the underside of my jaw below each ear. Laziness permeated the mortal world, but I’d be Destroyed before I would allow such weakness into my Shield again.

  “Unacceptable. Add this topic to the evening’s schedule and prepare a report of all instructions you’ve recorded that were not given by Vilicangelus or myself.”

  “Yes, Vitae.”

  “Meanwhile, I’ll go clean up after Aquaylae once more. Please include my intentions in your update to Vilicangelus and lock down the garden.”

  “Vilicangelus shall be notified. Be careful, sir.”

  Another throb stiffened my shoulders. I aimed my displeased scowl at the room in general. “I’m just as capable of handling an incursion as the others.”

  “I offered warning, not insult, Vitae. One phoenix has fallen to whatever threat breached the Veil. Protocol requires caution when investigating a death regardless of the shield’s skills or capabilities, particularly when only one phoenix is available.”

  Anima wasn’t a living being capable of offering offense. Though I didn’t fully trust the technology that had replaced the viewing pool and oracle of centuries before, taking offense where none was offered remained a choice of perception. I’d chosen to transfer my irritation with Aquaylae to the harmless machine.

  “Your caution is correct. I offer my apologies.”

  3: Rebirth Pains

  Quayla

  Awareness flared as the prepared waters of my nest rose above the basin, reforming my body cell by cell. A curse escaped my mouth the moment the essence finished coalescing into a full body.

  My voice sounded strange, but the tiny mirrored alcove caging my nest always distorted sounds just as it always reflected the glowing silver runes etched into my basin’s stone rim.

  I grimaced, running my tongue across my teeth to scrape away the memory of grendling blood from my tongue. I pushed open the alcove’s doors.

  A teardrop sapphire embedded in my chest sparkled with magical essence. Blue ripples cradled the jewel, seemingly tattooed to compliment the gem.

  Two of the mirrored walls swung away to reveal a complex glyph. The glowing symbol matched a teardrop sapphire embedded in pale white skin high over my heart and the complimentary blue ripples cradling the gem with sparkling magical essence.

  My touch triggered the essence locks. They dimmed, energy no longer drawing the two symbols together like electromagnets. A counter mechanism took advantage of the missing attraction to slide apart the bookshelves hiding my nest.

  Sunlight filtered through gossamer curtains, filling my clothes-strewn bedroom with rose-tinted light

  I turned my back to the room and raised my arms toward the chin-up bar suspended above me.

  I cursed again.

  My new arms no longer reached the bar.

  Damn it, Dylan’s going to be so pissed. He loved my long legs.

  I closed my eyes, squared my metaphysical shoulders and directed my gaze downward before opening my eyes once more. Held breath exploded from me in response to my relief.

  I have breasts, they’re much smaller, but I have them.

  I looked lower, fighting a cringe.

  Thank God, I’m still female.

  Each rebirth created my fellow shields and I anew. I’d never actually heard of a phoenix being reborn hermaphroditic, but each new body was formed from the full spectrum of human possibilities. Anything and everything could change with a new body.

  I’d hatched female, but big picture, my gender had never really mattered. I’d always focused on the contents of another’s heart rather than what parts did or did not dangle. Dylan hadn’t so much changed that, but bathed the possibilities involved with rebirths in desperate anxiety.

  A chance meeting with one of Dylan’s ex-boyfriends during a night out early on in their dating informed me of his bisexual tendencies. The revelation had been one of the supporting reasons I’d ultimately decided to trust him with the truth of what I was. He’d listened, and once the initial shock faded, chosen to stay with me.

  Even so, this is the first time I’ve died since we started dating. Who knows how he’ll take this.

  An itch took up residence high on both cheek bones. I tried to squash my concern, but Dylan’s reaction could make or break our relationship. Dying offered a litany of troubles enough without borrowing trouble with Dylan. In the modern age, changes of appearance or gender meant my identity died when I did.

  Just lucky that financial transactions aren’t exclusively dependent on fingerprints or facial recognition yet.

  Even with all the other troubles queued up in my day, I had trouble pushing Dylan from the forefront of my thoughts. I should’ve been more worried about Vitae and the fallout from yet another failure, but Dylan was one of the few parts of my life that was distinctly mine. To make matters worse, I’d seen other phoenixes with mortal loved ones in my first Shield deal with the ramifications of a death.

  If the mortal hadn’t been trusted with the secret of the phoenix’s true identity like I’d trusted Dylan, that phoenix died—forced to watch their loved one grieve, move on and eventually surrender to old age.

  Probably why Ignis and Terrance don’t date.

  If the mortal was in the know, they faced the shock involved in loving someone suddenly possessed of a wholly new body.

  In this case, Dylan’s bisexuality should make things easier. He shouldn’t care which parts I possess after a rebirth.

  My heart ached with a dread I couldn’t seem to shake.

  The simple truth was it didn’t matter how well Dylan had taken the initial revelation. Some relationships simply didn’t survive that first death.

  I leapt up to the chin-up bar, hanging by my arms while my essence dripped from my toes back into the basin. As shed tears dripped back into my all-too-empty nest, I really studied my reflection. Tight curls of plainest brown replaced the long, black hair that’d formerly framed my face.

  I groaned.

  In summer humidity, my hair’s going to be a frizzy disaster.

  My face hadn’t changed much, though more so than the previous death and gender change. My new legs were definitely shorter and a bit thicker, but still athletically toned. I’d lost all the tan I’d worked most of the summer to get for Dylan—not that he’d been so shallow as to request I sunbathe.

  I shrugged to no one in particular. Dylan complimented me on my tan when we first met. Squeezing sunbathing time into my busy schedule hadn’t been easy, but the tiny gesture pleased him.

  Hopefully enough to tip his heart in my favor today.

  The new breasts beneath the mark of my birth element had been reborn at least two sizes smaller

  Great, bra shopping.

  My expression brightened.

  Guess it’s not all bad. I won’t have as many back aches, and my overall fighting balance will probably improve—once I learn it.

  Ache crept down my arms. I swung back and forth, trying to hurry clinging tears back into the basin. I reversed my grip, swung a few more times and launched myself out of the nest. I hit the ground wrong and stumbled.

  I turned, reached out to the bookshelves and noticed the water level of my nest. A tingle along my spine solidified into a knot of unease. I knelt beside the basin. Scrutinizing my remaining essence wasn’t encouraging.

  Barely enough for one more death.

  “Ani?”

  “How may I serve you, Shield Aquaylae?”

  My mouth quirked into a frown. I’d asked the automata to call me Quayla. A sudden realization explained the change, Vitae had overridden me...again.

  “Who’s headed out to the humane society?”

  “Vitae.”

  This day isn’t improving.

  “Do you suppose he’d be willing to collect any of my essence he can mop up?”

  “He is away from his vehicle, so I
am unable to contact him. Could you simply call him to ask?”

  I stifled a scream. “Ugh! I transmog’ed my phone!”

  “That complicates things,” Anima said. “I am sorry. I’m sure you would’ve liked to retrieve any essence with as low as your nest is at the moment.”

  Anima was somehow able to sense the levels of our nests. She’d no doubt inform Vitae how much I had left, bringing on another lecture from the inconsolable life phoenix.

  Just after my catastrophic mistake and subsequent relocation to the Atlanta Shield, my new Shieldheart had seemed cold, distant and disapproving. I’d deserved his scorn and the probation for what I’d done, but I’d tried everything to prove myself, to earn his respect.

  I simply could not manage to find any traction with him.

  It wasn’t fair.

  I’d tried working hard.

  He’d criticized everything I did.

  I’d tried backing off and giving him space.

  He’d accused me of being inattentive to my duties.

  I took a deep breath and exhaled. “Thanks, Ani.”

  “It is my pleasure to serve, Shield Aquaylae.”

  I crossed to my vanity and set a hand on a small alderwood box inlaid with tarnished silver. I touched the gem in my chest with the other hand and closed my eyes.

  “In service onto death I swear this life unto the Undying Light.”

  Each word sent a tingling thrum through my new skin. The box vibrated beneath my touch. The glow died within the little chest as my eyes reopened. I lifted the lid to find a silver-dipped feather hung like a pendant on a matching chain.

  The necklace had been lost with my death, but while everything else—like my phone—remained behind, the angelic token from the Shield’s divine could always be called into the box shaped in whatever form I desired.

  I pulled the chain over my head and hurried into my closet. I glanced at the door’s mirror as I passed, noting my new dimensions for fitting purposes. A small stool from the closet floor helped me bring down emergency clothing shoeboxes marked by size and gender. The paisley designs on the correct box knotted my stomach.

  I drew out granny panties obviously purchased during a drunken stupor. A set of rhinestone-studded bellbottoms and a tie-dyed smock added insult to injury. The smock went over a shaking head before my whole focus shifted to struggling my way into the pants. The jeans proved too narrow for my new hips.

  I jumped up and down, yanking until I reclaimed enough fabric to mostly close my pants with a belt and several safety pins.

  At least the smock kind of covers everything.

  Pink flip flops topped the insult sundae.

  I rushed out the door, only to stop short and growl. I hurried back to my MacBook and sent Dylan an instant message. “Honey, I need a bit of help.”

  “What’s wrong?” Dylan asked.

  “I lost my phone. Can you order an Uber for me?”

  “Do you want me to call your phone so you can find it?”

  “Lost isn’t the right word so much as destroyed?”

  “How did you destroy your phone?”

  “I kind of died. Could you please help?”

  He didn’t answer for several moments. Each short, silent breath hollowed out my gut a little more. A thought bubble with three dots replaced his silence.

  I held my breath.

  The three dots disappeared.

  They reappeared delivering more unease.

  When I couldn’t take his silence any more, I sent another message. “Dylan, baby?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Humane Society on Howell Mill. Is everything okay?”

  “It’s on its way.” A second message followed. “We’ll discuss this later.”

  He signed off of the messaging system.

  I pinned a quivering lip with my teeth.

  I rushed to the sink, turned on the water and listened to the water’s sound as I took a few calming breaths. Atlanta water was horrible stuff, and a running faucet wasn’t the babble of a flowing stream, but I needed my calm sooner rather than later.

  When I felt in control of myself once more, I hurried down three flights of creaky stairs, holding the railing to keep my unfamiliar body steady. A shadow appeared through glass ovals of the foyer’s front doors.

  A smile blossomed on my lips only to die under a deluge of apprehension. I grabbed the door anyway, letting an overflowing shopping cart and my aged landlady into the three-story walk-up.

  “Thank you, Quayla.”

  “You’re welcome, Mrs. Cox. Can I help you with those?”

  “No need, dear.” The tiny, grey-haired woman looked me up and down with a steadily growing frown. “Dear, what possessed you to get a perm in all this humidity?”

  Despite the changes to both body and voice, Mrs. Cox proved mostly oblivious to the changes. The phenomenon stemmed first from the tendencies of mortals to only really look at a person once—relying on subconscious mental algebra to adjust for changes of clothes or hair. An additional aspect of our nature discouraged mortal eyes from completely fixing on my kind. Instead, mortal eyes tended to slide away, distracted by one thing or another.

  I deflected the perceptive question with casual, good-humored laughter. “Something just came over me.”

  “That handsome boy talked you into it, didn’t he? Please tell me he’s not trying to rope you into some cult that wants to bring back disco.”

  “No,” I looked down at my clothes and offered her a chagrined smile. “Couldn’t find anything else to wear—laundry day.”

  “You should plan ahead, young lady. Speaking of which, when are you two getting married?”

  “He’s mad at me at the moment,” I said.

  Mrs. Cox patted my hand. “You stick to your guns, dear. He’ll back down—especially after you got that horrid hairdo for him.”

  A car horn sounded outside the building.

  “I’ve got to run, Mrs. Cox, we can—” I froze in the doorway, gaping at a jacked-up Cadillac Escalade with Uber and GrubHub, Lyft and Waitr decals augmenting an eye-searing Florida Gators paint job.

  Just not going to be my day.

  Quayla

  I asked the Uber driver to drop me off a block away from the humane society. I left him and his NASCAR bobble heads nodding to some twangy woman singing about slitting car tires. The moment I came even with the street leading to the Humane Society, visions of renewed probation loomed out of a dozen flashing lights. I slid through a growing crowd of gawkers toward the police line.

  Vitae stood tall and lean in a black suit, suitable for nineteenth century England rather than modern day Atlanta. The island of space surrounding him had nothing to do with his attire. His personal bubble somehow forbade the pressing wafers entrance. A glowing aura emphasized the subtle sheen of perspiration coating his skin.

  Formal clothes in this heat? What is it with him?

  I never unintentionally sweat, but even so my too-tight jeans made an alliance with a sweltering early morning to overheat me.

  A vitality colored Vitae’s radiant, olive skin that didn’t inhabit either stance or expression. He aimed robust, furrowed brows toward me. An emerald gleam backlit large, brown eyes.

  He gestured to the phone at his ear.

  My heart leapt.

  A shutter sound aborted my grab. Vitae lowered the phone. “Update it immediately, Isaac. Thank you.”

  Vitae turned his back on me.

  I followed his scowl to a paramedic team dragging a gurney of poorly-concealed grendling bodies.

  Vitae slid the phone into an inner pocket. “You left bodies.”

  A well-dressed woman stuffy-looking enough to be Vitae’s type stopped the EMTs and raised the sheet. Her soft features hardened.

  “I died, Vitae.”

  The detective turned away, receiving a stack of paper from a rotund woman in bone-decorated lavender scrubs. The officer split the stack, handing them out to uniformed cops.

  �
��You’re the one who chose to ride in on a stallion, six guns blazing, setting off alarms and leaving faerie body parts in your wake.”

  “I was still in Europe during the start of the wild west era, Vitae. When later I came here, you put me under house arrest, remember?”

  A cute uniformed cop pushed a printout in front of Vitae, addressing him in an authoritative soprano. “Excuse me, sir, have you seen this woman?”

  My eyes shifted from the officer’s firm legs and athletic frame to a grainy picture of my last, partially masked face.

  “I do not see a lot of women with plastic bags over their faces,” Vitae said.

  My hair doesn’t look like a plastic bag.

  The printout left me cringing.

  My liquefied hair did, in fact, resemble a cheap plastic bag in the poor resolution printout. My gaze came up to find beautiful blue eyes narrowed in my direction under a frame of lustrous hair.

  “Miss?” The officer scrutinized me. “Do you know this woman, a relation maybe?”

  I shook my head. “Sorry, no.”

  The young cop seemed unconvinced but moved down the line. I watched her, trying to ignore a lovely profile made even more enticing by the gun belt and handcuffs on her hips.

  Vitae cleared his throat. “If you’re done considering another improper relationship, we must address the mess you’ve caused.”

  The woman officer glanced back at us several times. The cop’s interest remained professionally suspicious.

  I don’t know why he’s so mad at me. It’s not my fault new bodies are always so anxious to test all of their new parts.

  I sighed. “Do you expect me to march in there and take the corpses away from them, Vitae?”

  Red spots appeared under his jaw. “You are a shield, a servant of the Undying Light. I want you to focus on your duty rather than sensations and experiences like some hell-tainted faerie.”

  A rush of gooseflesh raced over me and my scalp tingled like my hair had decided to levitate away. I pressed my lips into a thin line.

  “Furthermore, you will advise me of possible incursions, stop going off solo and for the love of the Light, cease embarrassing us among the other Shields. Thanks to you, we’re a laughingstock.”